The Blackwater Lightship

CHAPTER TWO

She woke early, with a strange feeling of disappointment, as though she had missed something important. Her mouth was dry. She realised that she would not get back to sleep, and she lay there going over the events of the party. It struck her that she felt the way a child feels when a buzz of excitement is replaced by bedtime or dull duty.

It was eight o'clock; she had been asleep for only four hours. She got up and, when she was washed and dressed, began to clean up from the party, emptying and refilling the dishwasher, tying up black plastic bags full of rubbish and leaving them outside the back door. By the time Hugh appeared, it was almost done. He was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt.

'You should have left it for me,' he said.

'It's all finished,' she said, 'so you can concentrate on packing.'

He came over to the sink, where she was standing, and held her.

'I'm going to miss you,' he said. 'I'm going to think all the time of things I want to say to you but you'll not be there.'

'If I didn't have this meeting in the Department and the school interviews I could change my mind, but it's only a week or so,' she said.

She closed her eyes and put her mouth against his bare neck. The lack of sleep served only to intensify a sudden desire for him, and now she began to fondle him and he slowly began to kiss her. When she opened her eyes she saw that Cathal was studying them carefully from the kitchen door. She smiled and pushed Hugh away gently with her hands.

'Cathal,' she said, 'your breakfast things are on the table. We're going to he down for a while. We won't be long.' She wondered if Hugh's erection was apparent through his shorts.

Cathal remained silent, watching them as he moved towards the kitchen table. They went up to the bedroom and closed the door.

'Poor Cathal,' she said. 'I hope he's all right. It would be worse I suppose if we were having a big fight.'

'Much worse.' Hugh laughed. 'Much worse.'

By eleven o'clock the boys' suitcases were in the boot of the car and Hugh's rucksack was on the back seat. Helen had written out a list of instructions.

'You're to go up through Ballyshannon,' she said. 'You're not to drive into the North.'

'Yes, ma'am,' Hugh said.

'I'm sure you've forgotten something,' she said.

'We've forgotten to kiss you farewell,' he said.

'And you're to mind all those Donegal people,' she said lightly. 'They're sly.'

She made sure that the boys had their seatbelts on in the back seat. Manus was impatient to be gone. He refused to kiss her goodbye. 'I'm bored waiting,' he said. She waved at them as the car drove off.

She knew as she walked back into the house that this next hour or two would be special, a time when she could savour and appreciate the empty, silent rooms and the sweet energy which Hugh and Cathal and Manus had left behind them.

Before lunch, Frank Mulvey and his son came to collect the tables and chairs. When he learned that Hugh and the boys had gone to Donegal, he nodded his head and looked at her. 'And will you be all right here now?' he asked.

'I'll be fine. It's just a few days.'

'My missus', he said, 'never lets me out of her sight.'

As she stood at the front gate watching the last of the tables being stacked into the van, she noticed a white car edging its way into the street and a man's head peering at houses as he drove by. She watched the car pass as Frank and his son closed the back door of the van.

'It's quiet enough around here.' Frank Mulvey surveyed the road as he got into the front.

'You should have heard us last night,' she said.

'You're not a Dublin woman, are you?' he asked.

'No, I'm from Wexford. Enniscorthy,' she said.

'Wexford,' he said. 'We used to travel to Courtown years ago on motorbikes.'

'Dublin fellows were all the rage in Courtown, I'd say.'

'We were the bee's knees, but that's all years ago, before you were born.' He closed the door. She watched him and his son, who had not spoken, put their seatbelts on. He beeped the horn as he drove away.

The white car had now turned in the road and was slowly coming towards her. She realised that the driver was looking for directions. When he drew up to her he pulled down the window.

'I'm looking for O'Dohertys', number fifty-five,' he said.

'This is it,' she said.

'Are you Helen?' he asked.

There was something both eager and friendly about him, but formal as well, and it occurred to her that he was a teacher looking for a job, coming with references or a CV to her house. She wondered how he had got the address. Her face darkened.

'Yes, I'm Helen,' she said stiffly.

'Hold on, I'll park the car,' he said.

She had spent the previous two weeks interviewing teachers and she thought she recognised the type: cocky, self-confident, lacking all reticence, the potential scourge of the staffroom and useless in the classroom. She waited for him at the gate.

'I'm Paul,' he said. 'I'm a friend of your brother's.'

She said nothing, still half sure that he was a teacher to whom Declan had given her address. She wondered if it was something Declan would do, but she did not know, it was years since she had met any of Declan's friends.

'You can come inside, but there's been a party here, the house is a mess.'

'A party?' he asked. His tone was odd and unconvincing.

'Yes, that's what I said \a151 a party,' she said dryly.

She brought him to the kitchen and sat down. She did not offer him anything. She expected him to sit down as well but he remained standing.

'Declan's in hospital. He's in St James's. He asked me to come out here and tell you.'

Helen stood up. 'I'm terribly sorry. I thought you were a teacher looking for a job.'

'No, I have a job, thanks.' It was his turn to be dry.

'Did he have an accident? I mean, is he OK?'

'No, he didn't have an accident, but he'd like to see you.'

'How long has he been in hospital? Sorry, what's your name again?'

'Paul.'

'Paul,' she said.

He hesitated. 'He said he'd like to see you. I don't know how you're fixed now, but I could drive you to St James's.'

'He wants to see me now? Hey, is this serious?'

Again he hesitated.

'I mean, is he all right?' she asked.

'I saw him this morning and he's in good form.'

'You don't sound very reassuring.'

It was when he did not reply to this that she stopped herself asking any more questions. She looked at her watch; it was ten-past one.

'I have a meeting in the Department of Education in Marlboro ugh Street at four.'

'If you come now you can be in Marlborough Street by four,' he said.

She realised that he was waiting for another question.

'Right. I'll come now,' she said. 'But it will take me a few minutes to get ready.'

Upstairs, as she changed into her navy-blue suit and white blouse – her nun's costume, Hugh called it – she went over what Paul had said and not said. It would have been easy for him to have said that it was just something minor. Even if he was an alarmist, someone who thrived on bad news, he could still have said something which would indicate that it was not serious. Maybe when he said that he had seen Declan that morning and he was in good form, maybe by this he meant to say that there was nothing wrong really. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror and put on a discreet amount of make-up. She felt a sudden urge or longing, which at first she could not identify, but then knew that it was an urge to be back in the house before Paul's arrival, to be back half an hour ago without his heavy, ominous presence in the room below.

She brushed her hair and checked herself in the full-length mirror and then, reluctantly, she went downstairs. As she saw him in the kitchen, she felt an intense hostility to him, which she knew she would have to keep under control.

She found her briefcase in the front room and emptied it of books, leaving only a notepad and some biros. She made sure that the downstairs windows were closed, turned on the answering machine, checked she had her keys and then told Paul she was ready.

They drove in silence through Rathfarnham and into Terenure. Helen knew that the next question she asked would elicit information which would leave her in no doubt.

'You'd better tell me what's wrong,' she said.

'Declan has AIDS. He's very sick. He sent me to tell you.'

Her first instinct was to run from the car, to watch for the next traffic lights and try to open the door and run to the pavement, and become the person entering a newsagent's shop or \a166waiting for a bus, become anyone but the person she "was now in the car.

'I'll pull in if you like,' Paul said.

'No, go on, I'll be OK,' she said. 'How long has he been sick?'

'He tested positive a good while ago, but he's only been sick the last two or three years, even though he's looked OK. He was very bad last year, but he pulled through. He has a line in his chest which gets infected, and he has problems with one eye and he gets chemo once a month. He's much weaker now than he was. He's very worried about your mother.'

'So he hasn't told her either?'

'No. He decided, or I don't know if "decided" is the word, to leave it all until the last minute.'

Once again, she was left feeling unable to face the answer to the next question she might ask. She wished she knew Paul better so she could judge whether he had used the phrase 'the last minute' casually or deliberately. She thought about it: everything else he said had been measured and deliberate; he would hardly have used a phrase like 'the last minute' without meaning to.

'Is he dying then?' she asked.

'It will be harder this time.'

'Has he been in hospital long?'

'On and off, but mostly he goes to the clinic'

'My mother told me he was busy.'

'He hasn't been working. Also he's been avoiding seeing you and your mother.'

'What's he been living on?'

'He has money saved, and he's been working on and off.'

'Does Declan have a boyfriend, you know, a partner?'

'No,' Paul said flatly.

'Has he been living alone?'

'No, he's been staying with friends. He's been travelling a bit. He went to Venice at Easter – two of us went with him – but he doesn't have much energy. He went to Paris for a weekend, but he got very sick there.'

'It must have been hard looking after him,' she said.

'No, it's hard now, because he's weaker and he hates being in hospital, but he is the best in the world.'

'And why didn't he tell us?'

They were stopped in traffic on Clanbrassil Street now. Paul glanced at her sharply.

'Because he couldn't face it.'

She realised from the way he spoke that he considered her an outsider, a remote figure who had to be brought into the picture. Declan, she thought, had replaced his family with his friends. She wished he had thought of her as a friend.

They said nothing as they drove along Thomas Street. She still could not figure Paul out – the mixture of the dry, factual tone and the something else, which was softer, more sympathetic. They passed the brewery and then turned left into the hospital grounds. He drove into a car park at the side.

'Does Declan have a doctor he sees all the time, or a consultant?' she asked as they walked towards one of the hospital buildings.

'Yeah, but I don't think she's here today.'

'She?'

'Yeah, Louise. She's the consultant.'

'Does Declan like her?'

'He likes her, she's a good person, but "like" isn't really the word.'

As they "walked into the reception hall she asked him what he did for a living.

'I work for the European Commission,' he said. 'I'm taking time off at the moment.'

This wing of the hospital was old, with high ceilings, shiny walls and echoing corridors. Paul led the "way without indicating how far they were from Declan's room. She did not know at what point he would turn and open a door and she would find Declan. It astonished her that less than an hour ago she was in her own house, undisturbed.

'Sorry, Paul.' She stopped him in the corridor. 'I have to ask you – are we talking about days, or weeks, or months? What are we talking about?'

'I don't know. It's hard to say.'

As they spoke, a young doctor in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck came up to them.

'This is his sister,' Paul said. The doctor nodded into the distance.

'Don't go in for a while,' he said. He seemed distracted.

Helen looked at her watch; it was two o'clock.

'She has to go at half-three,' Paul said.

'I can always cancel the meeting,' she said.

'Hold on here,' the doctor said. 'I'll go in and look.' He walked down the corridor and quietly opened a door on the right.

'I have a name, you know,' she said to Paul.

'I'm sorry, I should have introduced you properly.'

'What does Declan want to do about my mother?' she asked.

'He wants you to tell her.'

Helen smiled sourly.

'I speak to her on the telephone sometimes, but I don't know exactly where she lives. I mean, I have her address, but I haven't been there. We don't get on.'

'I know all that,' Paul said impatiently. He sounded like someone chairing a meeting.

'And?' she asked.

'He wants you to go and tell her. You can have his car. It's in the car park. I have the keys.'

The doctor came back and beckoned them to come with him. 'He wants you both to go in at the same time,' he said.

The room was darkened but Helen could make out Declan in the bed. His eyes followed her; he smiled. He was thinner than when she had last seen him three or four months before, but he did not look sick.

'Paul,' he said in a hoarse whisper, 'could you open the window and pull the curtains a bit.' He tried to sit up.

A nurse came in and took his temperature and wrote it on a chart and then left. Helen noticed a dark, ugly bruise on the side of Declan's nose. He began to speak to Paul as though she was not there.

'So what do you think of her?'

'Your sister? She would have made a great reverend mother,' Paul laughed.

Helen remained motionless and silent. She tried to smile and forced herself to remember how hard this must be for Declan. She wanted to strangle Paul.

'She's nice, though,' Paul added.

'Hellie,' Declan said. 'Will you deal with the old lady?'

'Do you want to see her?'

'Yes.'

'When?'

'As soon as she can. And will you tell Granny as well?' He closed his eyes.

'You should meet my granny, Paul,' he said. 'She's the one would put manners on you. She's a real paint remover.'

'It won't be a problem, I'll drive out to Granny's as well,' Helen said. 'I'll make sure it's not a problem. Hugh and the boys are in Donegal.'

'I know,' Declan said.

'How do you know?'

'A friend of mine was at your party last night.'

'Who?'

'Seamus Fleming. He knows Hugh.'

'What does he look like?'

'Tall and skinny. Gorgeous eyes. He flirts,' Paul interjected.

'Does he play the guitar?'

'Yeah,' Declan said.

'Is he gay?' she asked.

'As the driven snow,' Declan said. Paul laughed. Declan closed his eyes and lay back and said nothing.

Helen knitted her brow in exasperation. No one spoke for a while. Declan seemed to be asleep but then he opened his eyes. 'Do you want anything?' she asked him.

'Do you mean Lucozade or grapes? No, I don't want anything.'

'This is a real shock, Declan,' she said.

He closed his eyes again and did not reply. Paul put his finger to his lips, signalling to her to say nothing more. They stared at each other across the bed.

'Hellie, I'm sorry about everything,' Declan said, his eyes still closed.

Before they left the hospital, they spoke to the doctor again. Helen noticed how friendly Paul was with him and how familiar. The doctor told them that the consultant \a151 he too called her Louise \a151 would be there all the next day, and she 'would see Helen and her mother at any time.

'I have to keep convincing myself, Helen said when they got outside, 'that this is really happening. You're all so matter-of-fact about it, but the truth is that he is dying in there and I have to go and tell my mother.'

'No one is being matter-of-fact,' Paul said coldly.

He walked with her to the car park in front of the new hospital. He opened Declan's car \a151 a battered white Mazda \a151 and handed her the keys. 'Have you driven one of these before?' he asked.

'I'll be OK, I'm sure,' she said.

'I'll be here most of the day tomorrow,' he said, 'but here's my home number anyway, I have it written down for you. Also, it seems to me that they don't really need to have him in hospital. He has to have a line put back in and that will be done early tomorrow morning, I imagine. But after that they probably won't do anything else with him, just monitor him. It's really easy to get into hospital, but really hard to convince them to let you out. If you and your mother told Louise that you wanted to take him out, even for a day, then she would listen to you.'

'The main thing tomorrow is my mother,' Helen said.

'No, hold on,' Paul said. 'The main thing is Declan, not your mother. He gets depressed in that hospital room, so it's not just a small detail. It's a priority.'

'Thanks for the correction,' she said.

She got into the car and closed the door, pulling down the window so she could still talk to him. 'I'm really grateful to you for everything,' she said. She tried to sound as though she meant it, regretting the hostility in her earlier tone.

'Yeah,' he said and looked away. He was about to say something and then stopped himself. He looked at her, his expression almost hostile. 'I'll see you,' he said.

She started the car and drove out of the hospital grounds and into the city centre. She found a parking space in Marlborough Street, took her briefcase from the car, put money in the meter and made her way to the reception desk of the Department of Education.

She was early and she sat there waiting. If Hugh were here now, she knew, he would make her go home. She wished he were waiting out in the car for her and were coming to Wexford with her. He would probably be in Donegal by now, settling the boys into his mother's house. She would phone him before she left. Her mind kept skipping as she thought about him and the boys and the meeting she was about to attend, and she found that each time she could not focus on what the trouble was, it was like a dark shadow in a dream, and then it became real and sharp – Declan, the hospital, her mother. Mostly, when she worried or was concerned, it was about things which could be solved or would pass, but this was something new for her \a151 and that was why, she believed, her mind kept avoiding it – something that would not go away, that could only get worse. She would do anything, she realised, to wish it away.

When some other school principals arrived, a porter came to take them upstairs.

'The Minister is here,' the porter said, 'and he wants to be introduced to you all before the meeting.'

A year earlier, the Minister had come to open the new science laboratories in Helen's school, and he had stayed afterwards for more than an hour in her office, asking questions, listening carefully.

When Helen walked into the room, she saw a few civil servants whom she recognised, including one with whom she had constant problems. Now, because of the Minister's imminent arrival, they were all polite and cowed. They shook hands and made small talk until the Minister came in.

'The Minister says he's met all of you at some time or another, but I'm going to introduce you all nonetheless.' John Oakley, the most senior civil servant, spoke.

The Minister greeted each person introduced and then politely asked them to take a seat. He remained standing.

'You're all welcome here,' he began. 'I know you're busy and I know you're going on holidays and we're all grateful to you for coming in today. These meetings are informal. However, there will be a report at the end and John Oakley here is going to write it and it will be done by Christmas. We've asked you to come here specifically because each of your schools has excelled in a certain area, areas which are particularly weak in other schools. The ones which come most to mind are absenteeism, in both teachers and pupils – Helen O'Doherty here has the lowest absentee rate or sick-leave rate for pupils or teachers anywhere; European languages \a151 Sister here has been getting extraordinary results, especially in the spoken languages, and girls doing well in physics and higher maths, and George Fitzmaurice's school in Clonmel has excelled in that. These are just a few of the areas, and we want to know how it's done and apply it elsewhere. If you want to submit written reports, by all means do so, but please come to a few of these informal meetings between now and Christmas. And, as I think you know, if you have any particular concerns or problems, come to me with them, either directly or through John Oakley, our door is always open. That's all I'm going to say now. Thank you all, and I'll leave you to it.'

The Minister smiled at them and spoke briefly to one of the civil servants. On the way out of the room, he caught Helen's eye.

'I've been meaning to talk to you,' he said. 'I think you told me the day I was out at the school that you were from Enniscorthy and your father was a teacher too. But I heard more about you when I was down there at the Mercy Convent and the nuns said that one of their past pupils was a school principal in Dublin and that your maiden name was Breen and that your father was Michael Breen. I knew your father well. We were both on the committee, the very first one, of the Irish Branch of the Association of European Teachers.'

'My father is dead twenty years,' Helen said. 'I didn't think you'd remember him.'

'It was a great loss, Helen,' the Minister said. 'You know, you might be too young to remember this about him, but he was brilliant and dedicated, one of the very best. He'd be very proud of you now, Helen.'

The Minister's tone was so personal and confidential, so unreserved, that Helen wanted to say something else to him, talk to him more, but he squeezed her hand and moved away and was soon talking to one of the other principals.

Helen waited until the Minister had left and then approached John Oakley.

'I have to go,' she said. 'I can't stay. I'll send you in a report and I'll be in touch.'

'Even if you could stay for half an hour,' he said.

'I can't.'

'Was it something the Minister said?' he asked suspiciously.

'I have to go to Wexford,' she said. 'I'll be in touch.'

As she walked down the corridor, she began to cry. A civil servant coming out of a doorway with a bunch of files looked at her, astonished. She walked down the stairs to the lobby and went out to the car. She sat there until she felt composed and then drove home to Ballinteer through the evening traffic.

By seven o'clock she was on the road to Wexford. Hugh, when she phoned him, had wanted to drive back down to Dublin; the boys, he said, had already forgotten he existed, they were so taken up with their cousins and the strand and their granny's house. He offered to get into the car immediately and come down, but Helen said no, she would go to Wexford on her own and phone him the next day.

She told him about Seamus Fleming, and Hugh said that he remembered Seamus asking when he was going to Donegal, but he never knew he was a friend of Declan's, he didn't even know he was gay.

'I hate the idea', she said, 'of him coming to the party, knowing that we didn't know.'

'Declan must have told him not to tell us,' Hugh said.

As she drove south, the sky began to brighten. Declan's car was old, and she had to be careful not to overtake on these narrow roads beyond the dual carriageway. At times she felt she was driving in a dream, one of those dreams that you wake from still unsure that it is over, but she was certain now as she drove on past Rathnew towards Arklow that she was wide awake. The evening light was clear, the sky blue with white clouds banked in the distance. She had not put a single thought into what she would say to her mother. When she began to picture the time they would spend together, whether in Wexford or in Dublin, she realised she would do anything to avoid it. She began to work out options.

She thought of booking into a hotel in Wexford and going to find her mother in the morning, but it was only when she stopped at Toss Byrne's in Inch, on the road into Gorey, that she knew for certain what she would do. She would not drive to Wexford that night. Instead, she would drive to Cush on the coast, where her grandmother lived, and tell her first. She would stay the night there; her grandmother would know how her mother should be handled.

She realised as she went into the lounge that she was starving. She had never stopped here before and, even though she had spotted the sign which said Food All Day, she was surprised to find a full-dinner menu on each table. She waited at the counter for a while, expecting to be told that the kitchen was closed, but a barman came and took her order and told her that he would bring the food down to her table. There was something typically Wexford about his accent and tone, a slightly awkward friendliness and openness which she had forgotten and which she now recognised, and it made her feel lighter as she went to the table and sat down. She had believed that nothing could lift her spirits, and now the barman's angled smile had made her almost cheerful. She knew, however, that what had really changed her mood had been the decision to postpone meeting her mother.

Her grandmother Dora Devereux lived alone in her former guest-house near the cliff in Cush. She was almost eighty and, except for her failing sight and fits of intense bad humour, was in good health. Helen pictured her now: her long neck and long thin face, grey hair pulled back in a bun, thick glasses, thin bony wrists, her expression alert, curious, watchful, tuned into every change in the wind or news in the neighbourhood. Helen smiled to herself as she thought about how her grandmother, in a rambling phone call a few weeks earlier, had told her about selling three sites for \a16315,000 each. She had done the deal without consulting Helen's mother, she had said defiantly. Her tone was that of a conspirator, seeking Helen as an ally and friend.

Helen had asked her grandmother if she was not getting on with her mother. Instead of replying, the old woman had gone on to remind Helen of how good she had been to Helen's mother in the time after her father died, how she had comforted her and consoled her, had sat up with her at night, slept in the room with her. How little she had got in return, her grandmother had said. She had seemed surprised, almost affronted, when Helen did not reply.

As Helen drove through Gorey and then turned left down the coast road, she thought to herself that with her grandmother it would somehow be easy to come like this, with bad news, looking for help. It would not be so easy to approach her mother. As she drove through Black-water, Helen found herself unable to imagine what telling her mother would be like. She realised that the bitter resentment against her mother which had clouded her life had not faded; for a long time she had hoped that she would never have to think about it again.

When she turned at the ball-alley, she felt she was entering a new realm. For the first mile or so there were no houses, and then a new bungalow appeared on a corner just after the turn into the forest. She was over- whelmed now by sadness, a feeling which replaced the sense of foreboding and shock which had filled her. It was a feeling which she could deal with; there "was no fear in it. The sudden rise in the road and then the first view of the sea glinting in the slanted summer light made it easier. The sadness brought tears to her eyes: she felt it sharply -that this would all go, that Declan would never see it again, never walk these lanes again, just as her father never would; soon they would only be a memory, and that too would fade with time.

She passed a mud ruin where old Julia Dempsey had lived out her days, and she would have given anything then to go back to the years before their father died, when they were children here and did not know what was in store for them.

At her grandmother's gate she stopped the car, pulled up the handbrake and turned off the engine. Her grandmother appeared at the door, her hand shading her eyes even though she stood in shadow.

'Here you are now, Helen,' she said as Helen approached from the car.

She had never in her life kissed her grandmother, or shaken her hand; now as she came close to her she did not know what to do.

'Granny, I'm sorry for barging in on you like this.' 'Oh, it's a great surprise, Helen, it's a lovely surprise.' Her grandmother searched her face and then looked back towards the gate to check that no one else was coming. She turned and walked into the house. The big old Aga cooker in the kitchen was on full, and the room was warm. As Helen came in, the two cats jumped up to the top of the dresser – their constant presence there looking down on the room had amazed Cathal and Manus the previous year – and sat there watching her suspiciously.

'Now, Helen, there's tea on and I could make you up a fry.'

'No, Granny, I'll just have tea. I had a meal on the way down.'

She realised that her grandmother was biding her time, asking nothing, waiting to be told.

'Granny, I have very bad news.'

Her grandmother turned and put her two hands into the pockets of her apron as though searching for something. 'I know, Helen. I knew that as soon as I saw you.'

She remained standing as Helen told her the story. She concentrated fiercely on what was being said so that Helen felt, when she was finished, that the old woman could have repeated every single word she had said. There was something which she had forgotten: in the corner of the kitchen sat a huge television; her grandmother had access to all the English channels as well as the Irish ones. She watched documentaries and late-night films and prided herself on being well informed on modern subjects. She knew about AIDS and the search for a cure and the long illnesses. 'There's nothing can be done, Helen, so,' she said. 'Nothing can be done. It was the same years ago with your father's cancer. There was nothing the doctors could do. And poor Declan's only just starting his life.'

'What will I do about my mother?' Helen asked.

'You'll go into Wexford in the morning and you'll break the news to her softly, Helen. Let her sleep tonight now. It's the last night's sleep she'll have for a long time.'

Her grandmother made tea and put biscuits on a plate. She sat down opposite Helen. It was still bright outside, and Helen felt a desperate need to go down to the strand, to get away from the intensity of her grandmother's attention.

'I'll make you up a bed now,' her grandmother said. 'The room hasn't been used since you were here last summer. Your mother never stays, and she hasn't been here much recently.'

'Have you fallen out with her?' Helen asked.

'Ah, not really. She still thinks she's going to get me to move into Wexford. What if I broke my leg out here, she asked me. And I told her I've plenty of money now that I sold the sites; that old field that was full of ragwort. I never consulted her or asked for her opinion. And that's all is wrong with her, but she's well over it now. She's good at forgetting things, putting them behind her. And I had the central heating installed without as much as a by-your-leave from her. Come on until I show you.'

She stood up and Helen accompanied her into the old dining-room. She pointed at the new white radiator, and then opened the doors of the two bedrooms off the dining-room with iron beds and bare mattresses. These two rooms also had radiators.

'I had it put in all over the house, and a big oil tank out the back. I bought a deep-freeze as well, so I have no worries. Your mother came down when the work was half done and said that the house would rot. She said that she had everything set up for me in Wexford. "It's a wonder, Lily," I said to her, "that you don't look high-up or low-down at me and I only ten miles out the road and you with your big car. Isn't it funny now that you've started to call when you know I have money?" Oh, she was raging. That was Easter and I didn't see her again until the end of May. She brought me down this.' She took a mobile phone from her apron pocket. She held it in her left hand as though it were a small animal. 'Oh, I told her I couldn't have a phone in the house. I'd worry about it, so I keep this here, it's turned off, I never use it.'

'But, Granny, you didn't mean it about the money.'

'No, Helen, but it was the only thing I could say that would make her stop trying to move me into the town. Oh, she was raging. And she'd be even more raging if she thought I told you. God help her, she'll have other things to think about now.'

Her grandmother went over to the window and peered out through the curtains.

'Is it easy to get down to the strand this year, Granny?' Helen asked.

'Oh yes, Helen, they dug steps and the steps have stayed, except for the last bit which is all marly and mucky.'

'I'd like to go down, just for a minute, just so I can think, it's been the longest day I've ever spent.'

'You go down, Helen, and I'll make up your bed, and I'd be glad if you'd drive the car into the yard or I'll have dreams about it rolling over the cliff.'

'I won't be long.'

The last strong rays of the sun could be seen over the hill behind the house. The air was still, with hardly a hint of the night about to fall. She felt almost healed and enclosed by her grandmother, but she knew, too, that her grandmother's attempt to suggest that nothing could hurt her was half pretence; the other half was a hardness built up over a lifetime of expecting the worst and then watching it unfold.

As Helen walked down the lane, she could see only the soft blue horizon and she could not imagine what the sea would look like in this light. And when she came to the edge she saw it down below: blue with eddies of dark blue and green in the distance. The sea "was calm and the waves rolled over with an easy, whispering crash. There was no barrier at the end of the lane; a car could easily be driven over and would tumble down the clay and marl on to the sand below. But no strangers were expected here; even in the summer it was not a place for casual visitors.

She found the steps and began to make her way down to the strand. The first stretch was easy, but soon she had to move carefully, holding on to weeds and tufts of grass, trying and failing to avoid the muck and the wet marl. She had to run down the last bit; it had always been like that, there was always too much loose sand at the bottom.

She stood on the narrow strand and shivered. Down here in the shadow of the cliff it seemed darker, colder, more like late August than late June. A line of sea birds flew a hand's distance above the calm water. And as each wave came in, it looked as though it might not break, but merely casually spill in and then get sucked back, but every time there came the inevitable lift and curl and a sound that was almost remote, a sound that, she believed, had nothing to do with her and had no connection to anything she knew, the quiet crashing of a wave.

From here as far as Keatings' the erosion had stopped or slowed down. No one knew why. Years earlier, it had seemed just a matter of time before her grandmother's house would fall into the sea, just as Mike Redmond's and Keatings' outhouse had done. And now Keatings' old white house itself was falling, but there was still one house between her grandmother's and the sea.

The erosion had stopped, but when she watched now she noticed fine grains of sand pouring down each layer of cliff, as though an invisible wind were blowing or there was a slow, measured loosening of the earth. It was bright enough still while she looked south to see Raven's Point and Rosslare Harbour. The strand, as she walked along, became narrower and stonier; she listened to the waves hitting the loose stones, unsettling them, knocking them against each other and then withdrawing. She saw, as she walked towards Keatings', that some of the red galvanised iron from a shed at the side had fallen now, and raw walls with strips of the old wallpaper were open to the wind, and soon they would fall too, until only a few people would remember that there had once been a hill and a white house below it way back from the cliff.

Here, the county council had put huge boulders to protect the cliff, but they had no impact. When she turned back, she saw that the line of coast from Cush to Parle's Gap and Knocknasillogue was as it had been ten or fifteen years before, as though time had stood still. The colours were darkening now, night was coming down. She would walk up the gap where Mike Redmond's house had been and then along the lanes to her grandmother's house or along the clifftop if it seemed easier.

She noticed something out of the side of her eye, and when she turned she saw it again: the lighthouse flashing in the distance, Tuskar Rock. She stood again and watched it, waited for the next flash, but it took a while to come, and then she waited again as the rhythm of the night set in.

She walked on, knowing what she was facing into now. She imagined Declan in Dublin, afraid, wondering what had happened, alone in the small hospital room with the long night ahead. It was something which she could barely imagine, and as soon as she started thinking about it she stopped herself, and began to dream about him now arriving in his car, hearing the sound of it approaching and seeing him turn in the lane, and knowing that he was, most of the time, able to get around his grandmother in a way that Helen never could. He could talk to her as no one else was able to; he pretended to share her prejudices, he managed to laugh at her in a way she never minded. Declan would have loved her showing him the central heating and the mobile phone. He would have known what to say.

The climb was easy at Mike Redmond's, easier than the steps to her grandmother's lane. Helen walked through the ruin of the house, the front wall having long since fallen into the sea. She looked at the old chimney and the back wall still in place, and then stood at the edge waiting for the next flash from Tuskar. It seemed brighter now, stronger, from this height. She could feel the dew falling and could hear the sound of cattle somewhere in the distance as she made her way back to her grandmother's house.